


Too Much Girl

by Cân Cennau (cancennau)



Series: Llenwadau Bingo Trôp Slâc OTW (2016) [7]
Category: Agatha Christie's Poirot (TV), Poirot - Agatha Christie
Genre: Age Difference, F/F, Introspection, May/December Relationship, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:25:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8867500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cancennau/pseuds/C%C3%A2n%20Cennau
Summary: prompt: may-december romanceJudith reflects on an aspect of her and Felicity's relationship that nags at the back of her mind





	

Womanhood was something Judith was both intimately aware of, and hopelessly uneducated on.

She remembers when she was first aware of it, when she was young - mothers talking in half-hushed voices, but when questioned, only said “you’ll find out when you’re a woman”. And it continued, in Home Economics classes. ‘skills you’ll need in womanhood’, teen magazines that espoused the virtues of stockings and make-up and perfume, all under the headline of ‘make yourself more womanly!’, dating columns that frequently suggested ‘make yourself more woman’ to entice back a straying husband… And then the stories, and the rumours that circulated around about relationships and how they only worked if you were enough of a woman.

Judith knew older men liked younger women to play with, but never to marry. The girls at school giggled and blushed when older men paid them compliments, but behind closed doors they warned each other that what they had wouldn’t last. Older men left their younger lovers in the end, after taking what they wanted, to become ‘respectable’. Young women were still ‘girls’, and older men needed older women to ‘keep them in line’ and to ‘support him around the house’. Judith thought it was a bit ridiculous really - marrying for the sake of becoming a housemaid? No thank you! - but she remembered the tears and arguments back in school, where girls had their hearts broken by men who wanted ‘respectability’. Father was always so gung-ho about it, wanting to find the cad and give him a talking to, but Mother always talked him down.

It had been something she thought of frequently since she’d kissed Felicity, in the shadows of her apartment, drunk on champagne and the butterflies in her stomach. Their relationship was unorthodox to say the least, and she knew what the outside world would think if they ever went public with their affections, but that did not bother her much. She was happy, was contented to settle down with Felicity in their tin London apartment, visiting ‘Uncle Hercule’ on the weekends, waving to Chief Inspector Japp on his rounds, and flying over to Argentina to see Mother and Father. 

Felicity had never brought her age up, it was just a dynamic they were aware of but never spoke of. There was always the jokes - the teasing, the gripes, the buying of birthday cards with the ages either too old or too young for either of them. But it wasn’t a matter that needed to be discussed for them - Judith handled the heavy things in the flat, Felicity acted as spokesperson when a man wouldn’t take Judith seriously, they both worked on the best positions during sex to be comfortable. And yet, Judith still dwelled on the thoughts at the back of her mind about the older men and their older wives and their young lovers who were cast away because they were still girls

How did you tell when you were a woman?

Sex, of course, was the first to come to mind. She remembers school, age sixteen through to eighteen, full of teen magazines and peering through the bushes to the boys comprehensive on the other side of the fence. They used to crowd at school during the lunch break, discussing who’d been dating who, who had been with a man, who’d been left. Her friends used to say that you could always tell who’d stayed the night, because they left school a girl and came back a woman.

Josephine was one such girl, she remembered. Long legged and beautiful, with fiery red hair and a mellow, tanned complexion - Judith’s first crush, if she ever admitted it. There were rumours all the time about her, as there always was with beautiful girls - rumours she’d slept with the teachers for her high grades, rumours she’d slept with the headmaster to escape expulsion after a framing went wrong. Judith had believed them for a time, gossiping about her with her friends, judging, excluding. And then one day she’d found her in the school bathroom, half drunk on cheap vodka and crying, with vivid purple marks on her neck and blood on the inside her beige skirt. That was a reality of womanhood, of growing up too fast, but it was not a reality Judith wanted to have.

Perhaps it was in the act of dating. It was certainly something that she and Felicity partook in. Lazy nights, laying on her bed, exchanging kisses and knowledge smoking cigarettes out of an open window, talking days and nights about every topic imaginable, mentoring and teaching each other about the ways of the world. Hands tangled in clothes and legs and the niches in hips and fingers, touching, stroking, soothing, pleasing. Red wine before bed, a cooked meal made between them, ankles and toes playing a game of tag under the checkered tablecloth. Walking arm in arm down the busy London streets, pressed side by side in the back of a black cab, laughing over their own in-jokes.

Ah, but that wasn’t quite true either. She remembered Maria, young, naive Maria who confided in her one summer’s night, toes wet from polish and drunk on too much wine, that she was in love. An educated man, one of talent and prestige, a businessman who had a holding in the south of Africa and more awards in his trophy case than sense. She left her family to be with him, packing up all her possessions in the back of his shiny red car at the stroke of midnight. She returned in the fall with only a suitcase and a tear-streaked face, looking younger than ever.

So where did that leave her?

Judith asks her once, lying in bed post-coitus, cigarette smoke swirling around the glasses of wine and spiraling on the ceiling. Felicity laughs, and stubs her too-hot cigarette end in the glass ashtray beside the bed. 

“My dear,” she says, voice full of warmth. “You’re a woman when you say you are. No men required.”


End file.
